Ancient Jewish manuscripts, from Taliban caves to Israel

Scholars excited about find, one attributed to Babylonian rabbi

(ANSAmed) - JERUSALEM, JANUARY 4 - One thousand years after
they were written by highly-educated Jews who had made their
home in a remote area on the edges of the Silk Route for
trade-related purposes, a cache of Jewish manuscripts were
presented to the press yesterday by officials from Israel's
National Library. Some of the manuscripts are private documents,
while others have religious overtones. The officials said that
the manuscripts would be photographed using advanced
technological means as soon as possible and then made available
on the web.
A veil of mystery still hangs over the exact circumstances
enabling the Israeli institute to get hold of the manuscripts,
which were found a few years ago in caves in northeastern
Afghanistan in an area used by the Taliban. The region is said
to be an especially dry one, which made it possible to conserve
the manuscripts written on paper possibly of Chinese origins.

Media outlets have given credence to the version claiming
that foxes first dug into the ravine where hundreds of Jewish
manuscripts had been kept for centuries, and that the cache
later ended up in the hands of antiquities dealers. The National
Library of Israel has purchased 29 for the time being and is
negotiating for others. One of the institute's experts,
Professor Haggai Ben-Shammai, said that some of the manuscripts
were written in Judeo-Arabic (Arabic words in Hebrew script) and
Judeo-Persian (Persian words in Hebrew script). Others were
instead written in an unusual form of Hebrew used in Baghdad in
those times, which later disappeared. ''If it is counterfeit,''
Professor Ben-Shammai added, ''then the counterfeiter must have
been an ingenious, erudite individual.'' The manuscripts show
that the authors came from a wide variety of communities,
including Aleppo (Syria) and Egypt. Several of the documents
bear a date of the Islamic calendar, with the oldest dating back
to February 1005.

Scholars who have tried their hand at deciphering have
therefore now come into direct contact with an entirely unknown
Jewish community, who evidently expressed themselves in Arabic
and Persian. That said, a Hebrew grammar also surfaced along the
sheets of paper. The most important manuscript is attributed to
the rabbi of Egyptian origins Saadia Gaon, who went down in
history books for having translated the main Jewish texts into
Arabic and for running an important rabbinic school in Babylon,
the Sura Academy. (ANSAmed).